A Networked World

More Media Mashups

Jon Husband pointed me this morning to Thermo[SAT] which touts itself as

an initiative from The Society for Arts and Technology [SAT], explores the evolution of internet-based media and the ways it is enabling individuals and groups to produce and share what they create. It will also offer analysis and opinion on the related potential for social, cultural and economic impacts.

More specifically, the first phase of Thermo[SAT]’s life will focus on a set of developments that is already underway - the Web-based transformation of the traditional radio, TV and cinema industries and the emerging arena for services like IPtv, podcasting, photostreaming and videoblogging

These developments are creating an environment in which individuals and small groups can produce and distribute their work as easily as the large networks. This capability is a recipe for creative disruption and innovation. At the other end of the changing distribution channels … the increasingly interactive media users, who can choose what they want to watch or listen to, and increasingly when, how and where.

They are going to be V Busy as we all try to figure out what on earth is going on in the media space. After years of declaiming, "The Internet Changes Everything" we really are seeing what that means, in the business models of media companies on the money end through to the democratisation of production and the distribution of distribution.

The World Cup is already a testbed for FIFA, now it looks like its also an R&D project for Lycos. Frank Barnako reports that

Almost nine months ago, the CEO of Lycos Inc. said he had plans to turn his company around and eventually take it public. One strategy would be to earn money allowing people to upload homemade video. Back then, few people had heard of YouTube.com, but what Alfred Tolle described sounded a bit like what YouTube is today.

Except that it accepts files. Lycos, Tolle said, would provide audio and video editing and production tools for people to produce their programming online.

Tomorrow, when FIFA World Cup kicks off in Germany, Tolle's company will have four "embedded" reporters who will be the focus of an effort by Lycos to do more than report scores and show highlights. "They will be testing new technologies, kind of an 'alpha' platform, for products to be introduced in the next three to four months," explained Brian Kalinowski, operating chief of the Waltham, Mass.-based company.

Their job is to produce daily vignettes, "with a lighthearted and satirical approach to the culture of World Cup," Kalinowski said. "They will also be testing techniques to let us deliver high-quality, even high-definition, video from our platform, which consumers may eventually be able to use to distribute and monetize their content."

What? Can we read that again please? Consumers get to use these tools to distribute and monetize their own content?. Is this what Rupert Murdoch meant when he said that he wanted his site to "be the destination" for bloggers? It certainly looks a lot like Shirky's Mass Amateurisation of Publishing from 2002. It might even be the kosher offspring of the Chevy Tahoe Fiasco.

"We need to position ourselves as the content destination for creators and consumers," he continued. "I would like to give people the opportunity to share in advertising revenue we would get from people watching and listening."

Suddenly the idea of a "content destination" has a different ring, not a place I go to get content, but maybe a place to which I take content.

In light of the development of YouTube.com, Tolle clearly saw the wave before many other people. His idea, however, includes something extra -- a profit incentive.

I'm sceptical about the last bit, I think if his tools are good, he will see all the traffic he could wish for as people upload their stuff and have fun, and other people take the stuff that is already there and make something else of it again. And what will it be for, all this endless mashing?

Snacks. Consumers Turn to Web for 'Media Snack' Fix. From TechNewsWorld.com.

"Consumer-generated content [such as] YouTube is the millennial version of 'America's Funniest Home Videos,'" said Jack MacKenzie, senior vice president of Frank N. Magid Associates, a media research firm. However, now it's portable and offers users a huge community to interact with.

Charlie Todd, 27, posts to video sites because he enjoys "the ability for your users to rate and comment on your work," he said. He also posts because he doesn't have the server space or bandwidth to host memory-intensive video. Todd is the founder of Improv Everywhere, a New York-based improvisational comedy troupe that organizes heavily planned "missions" around the city to make people laugh, and then posts the results on the different video Web sites. They garner high ratings in the process.

Higher ratings means more views, which push the videos onto the front pages of the sites, which then guarantees more views. If it's good, it stays on the home page, said Arik Czerniak, CEO of Metacafe. At Metacafe, a top video could get half a million views in 24 hours. "You don't need to get lucky ... because we've streamlined the viral process, if something is good it will be noticed by the community. You don't need to have 1,000 people on your mailing list," he said.

The fundamental question is why this is so much better than traditional media fare and an answer is that it lets us do something that has been smacked out of our lives for too long, it lets US Play. Call me a Philistine if you like, but there are no redeeming social or humanitarian values to be gained from "Everybody Loves Raymond" and its ilk, none. Numa Numa, or the Brokeback Mountain trailer for Back to the Future or many of the hard case snippets on YouTube are no better as great art, nor any worse; but they are great generators of social currency, both directly for their creators and for those who email the links to their mates or blog about them or talk about them over the water cooler.

The revolution may not be televised, it may come in a torrent instead.

A Thought Experiment

Development is a strange business, it engages, or can engage some of the most privileged people on the planet with some of the least. In a very frank assessment of how it works in the Africa desk, the World Bank's Nicholas Gorjestani showed that there was a significant "gap to adapting knowledge to client needs in Africa". His paper is here, including,

... evaluations of operations showed that the quality at entry indicators of the Africa Region’s portfolio was below Bank averages. Insufficient use of lessons learned and effective development practices in the design and implementation of projects was a key factor contributing to relatively low indicators of quality. So, if we wanted to improve quality, we had to share and learn better and apply not only what we know as individuals but also what we know as an institution.